With Ballots & Bullets: Partisanship & Violence in the American Civil War

With Ballots & Bullets reveals disquieting relationships between mass partisanship and violence in the epochal Civil War era. The book provides historical insights on the political influence of ordinary people in the loyal states, but it also speaks to the nature of partisan conflict across time. It challenges and affirms historical and political scholarship with evidence from America’s most costly and consequential conflict, a cataclysm that still resounds in our politics today. In themes & methods, it fits with Acharya, Blackwell, & Sen’s (2018) Deep Roots, Berinsky’s (2009)In Time of War, Faust’s (2008)This Republic of Suffering,& Costa & Kahn’s (2008)Heroes & Cowards.

The book contributes four key insights about mass partisan dynamics in the Civil War era, utilizing vast datasets that include 7 decades of county election returns, over 1 million individual geo-located Union soldier records, Census reports, Grand Army of the Republic post locations, and a representative sample of newspapers:

Partisan Violence: partisanship & party leaders furthered (& hindered) the organized killing of opponents in rebellion via military participation in a fundamentally partisan war — partisan newspapers disproportionately mobilized enlistment; partisan areas differed in their voluntarism rates & had differential casualty rates among soldiers. Northern partisans also targeted each other with threats &, to a far lesser extent, violence.

Partisan Persistence: partisan voters seemed impervious to unprecedented political & military events, & unfathomable national casualties — voting was stable before the war as Northern Whigs & Free Soilers became Republicans; voting was remarkably stable during the war. Voting was highly nationalized (Pres./Gov./House) before & after the war, but especially during the 1860s.

Partisan Memory: Partisanship influenced post-war memory & veteran activism in the Grand Army of the Republic, transforming soldiers & society back into partisan civilians again, closing the partisan violence circle. Startlingly, local war deaths shaped votes through 1912, with stable local partisan cultures changed by war. Local monumentation, state commemoration, and record-keeping also differed systematically by local partisanship & war experiences.

These powerful partisan dynamics–shaped by interactions between and among leaders & citizens–held in a new party system. Strong voting continuities and political habits carried over across eras and into war, and then persisted after its end. The Civil War remade the nation and its people. This book shows the violent, dynamic role of mass partisanship in that remaking.